Walton and I both feel that being on the farm is magical--especially in the summer when the sky is as blue as a robin's egg and a light breeze flutters through the trees and sings in the grass. We can't imagine living anywhere else. In keeping with the magical atmosphere of the farm, I have spent some lovely afternoons constructing special little places for the tiniest and most elusive visitors to the farm--the fairies. Can you find all of the fairy gardens on the farm? Click and hover over the photos to get a clue as to where each can be found....

We are thrilled to host The Mountain Minor filming on the farm. We appreciate their passion for our Appalachian region--and for the very authentic and sincere story that the movie relates. Our farm dog Heidi (aka the dog star!) adored being the center of attention, and our family loved the sound of fiddle music filling up the holler and elevating everyday farm life into a concert. We are looking so forward to having everyone back in July. For more information on the film, check out The Mountain Minor website.

Spring continues to unfold around us in greens and golds. We are reminded of the Robert Frost poem :

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leafs a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

A real mountain woman is supposed to be tough enough to wring the head off of a chicken and serve the bird up to a whole passel of younguns. She has to know how to use a shotgun, an ax, and an outhouse even as she sings old ballads and tells enchanting tales by the fire at night. In short she’s supposed to be more comfortable with the world the way it was a hundred years ago than the way it is now.

Reflected in his big brown eyes I could see that day we brought him to our new farm, and raced him across the pasture, floating over the buttercups, and that radiant day Mary Ellis left us all in the dust, galloping across the mountain top on him—riding like the wind.